Cherry Creek Welcomes a Big-City Style Bodega to the Neighborhood

Real estate broker Dana Monfort was feeling under the weather one day and realized there wasn't a place in her Cherry Creek neighborhood where she could walk for a bottle of Advil. In the past, she could have gone to Safeway, which anchored one end of the Cherry Creek Shopping Center, but that supermarket closed in 2018, after 51 years.

"This area is just so walkable, and so I was walking around," she recalls. "And it was one day that I was sick, and I was like, why is there no place that I can go and grab Advil or DayQuil — you know, all the classics, hydration, whatever?"

Then, while traveling, she had two ah-ha moments.
"In New York, they have little bodegas on every street corner (usually run by Latino families). And then we were in California one time, and we ran into this little place in Napa Valley," she recalls. "Actually, it was basically very similar to this. Everybody needs Advil. And in Napa Valley, we got some water, some snacks, and then a really, really good bottle of wine."

The concept became concrete in her mind. "I was like, we need this exact thing in Cherry Creek. The original idea was just the bodega, and so I was looking for a space" she says. "I also always had the same thought in my mind that Cherry Creek doesn't have enough elevated fast casual, where you can run in and grab a really, really good meal and take it away."
The opportunity to merge both ideas became reality when she chose the three-sided space that used to house Crepes & Crepes on Third Avenue. On the left side she put the bodega, which is actually an elevated convenience store for Cherry Creek. In the middle is the fast-casual sandwich, salads and burrito deli. On the right side, she partnered with Little Man Ice Cream, which already offers its variety of creative cold treats at ten locations in the metro area.
"It kind of just clicked," she says of the location, which officially opens as Town Pump Provisions on August 15. "And I loved that this really posed some challenges with redeveloping the building and turning it into what it is now. I really wanted to maintain just the character of this building. I think it's so special and it's so cute."

This is the first entrepreneurial project in retail and food for Monfort, the Southwest Regional Director at Yale Realty & Capital Advisors and focuses on investments in mobile home and RV parks. She's married to real estate developer Kenny Monfort, the son of Colorado Rockies co-owner Charles Monfort. But her family has deep roots in trucking and logistics. That's how she came up with the name Town Pump Provisions — she envisions the business as a community hub where people can "fuel up," like a truck stop sans gas pumps.

Though the reference is to trucking, she's proud that the cozy complex maintains the overall feeling of Cherry Creek as a walkable community. And yes, you can find Advil there.

Town Pump Provisions is located at 2810 East Third Avenue; the grand opening is Friday, August 15, from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., with a ribbon cutting at 9 a.m. For more information, visit instagram.com/townpumpprovisions.